Python on Tandy Model 102?

[Dave Tweed]

Dan Hamm wrote:
> I know this is a weird question, but does anyone know if someone has ported
> Python to be able to use it on an old Tandy Model 102 laptop? This machine
> has a small Basic interpreter, and I was just thinking it might be able to
> handle Python as well.

I doubt it. A friend recently asked me about Python for embedded systems,
and after a quick search, I came up with this:

> > Do you know of anyone using Python in an embedded system, with the
> > interpreter and the code in ROM or flash?
> 
> Interesting question! No, I haven't seen anything like this, but the
> following Google search turns up some interesting possibilities:
>    http://www.google.com/search?q=embedded+python
> 
> In particular, the "Deeply Embedded Python" project looks exactly like
> what you need:
>    http://www.abo.fi/~iporres/python/
> 
> Also, this article talks about the possibility of using Jython to
> compile Python code to run on a JVM, which could be embedded in
> systems too small to run Python itself.
> 
>    http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/python/2001/03/21/pythonnews.html

Unfortunately, the "Deeply Embedded Python" link appears to have gotten
broken in the last week or two. Here's a description from
http://www.ntlug.org/~cbbrowne/python.html:

   Deeply Embedded Python is a minimal version of the Python virtual
   machine. It is targeted to small embedded systems where it is
   necessary a trade-off between language features and memory footprint
   of the interpreter. With this patch, it is possible to build a Python
   interpreter without support for float, complex and long numbers, file
   objects, parser, compiler and depedencies with any operating system.

As I recall, the footprint was still much larger than the 32K ROM/32K RAM
space of a Model 100/102, and that's with no interactive features at all.

-- Dave Tweed